Full name: Small Island: A Novel

Author: Andrea Levy Year: 2004 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Award winners, Fiction, Historical fiction Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780312429522 0312429525

Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of the immigrant's life. Similar books: The Long Song by Andrea Levy Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy The Help by Kathryn Stockett A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini Underworld by Don DeLillo The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin Sister of Mine by Sabra Waldfogel The Road Home by Rose Tremain The Girls by Emma Cline The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht Purge by Sofi Oksanen My Glorious Brothers by Howard Fast The Master by Colm Toibin Remember Ben Clayton by Stephen Harrigan The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry